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Kurt Vonnegut.
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Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. (1922—)
Having come to prominence only with his sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is a rare example of an author who has been equally important to ...
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Biography EssayAs of 1987 Kurt Vonnegut's work includes twelve novels, a play and a television play, two collections of short stories, two collections of essays, and a miscellany of uncollected shorte...
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Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (born 1922) is acknowledged as a major voice in American literature and applauded for his pungent satirical depictions of modern society. Emphasizing the comic absurdity of the huma...
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Described as "a word cartoonist, a wise guy, a true subversive," by Valerie Sayers in the New York Times, Kurt Vonnegut is lauded as one of America's most respected novelists, "recognized as a thought...
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"I got to be a joke-maker as the youngest member of my family. My sister was five years older than I was, my brother was nine years older, and at the dinner table I was the lowest ranking thing there....
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As of 1977, Vonnegut's work includes eight novels, a play and a television play, two collections of short stories, a collection of essays, and a number of uncollected shorter pieces of fiction and non...
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Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., remains something of a paradox among science-fiction writers. Although his place of importance in serious American fiction is now secure, his relationship to the genre that nurture...
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[This entry was updated by Peter J. Reed (University of Minnesota) from his entry in DLB 152: American Novelists Since World War II, Fourth Series.]Though Kurt Vonnegut had been a widely read short-st...
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In the following essay, Trachtenberg discusses the emergence of a dark comic mode in American fiction during the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on common themes in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonn...
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In the following essay, Kaufman contends that the divide between Kurt Vonnegut's comic persona and his cultural aims is obvious in many of his works, including Slapstick, Mother Night, and Cat&...
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In the following essay, Barnes provides several definitions of black humor, placing it in social and historical context, with special emphasis on the work of Kurt Vonnegut.
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In the review below, Wood discusses the role of comedy in Fates Worse than Death.
Dreamy, hectically anecdotal, slovenly and bearish with the truth, Kurt Vonnegut's writing has always handled f...
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In the following review, Clark argues that Fates Worse than Death lacks coherence.
Kurt Vonnegut, German-American author of Slaughterhouse-Five, the consummate work on the bombing of Dresden, fears he...
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In the following review of Fates Worse than Death, Cunningham praises Vonnegut's wit in addressing the problems of modern American society.
Kurt Vonnegut is the conscience of Middle America. Th...
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Critical Essay by Rebecca M. Pauly
With a certain facile agility, [Vonnegut] has gone genre jumping, assuming the colors, alternately, of short story writer, novelist, playwright, and sometime poet. C...
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Critical Essay by Ihab Hassan
Part satirist and part visionary, Kurt Vonnegut … enjoys a sudden vogue since the late Sixties, particularly among youths disaffected with militarism, greed, and e...
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Critical Essay by James Lundquist
There is a mystical, perhaps unnerving appeal in the way Vonnegut artistically maintains the clement aloofness that strangely accounts for much of his contemporaneity...
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Critical Essay by Clark Mayo
[Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.] is a Cosmic Fool, a clown who laughs at the world's failings and sorrows (and tries to tease, cajole and seduce us into laughing at them, too),...
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Critical Essay by David Bosworth
Vonnegut expresses a relentessly pessimistic vision of man, a pessimism far surpassing the cynic's belief in the eventual victory of evil or the fundamentalist&...
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Critical Essay by William James Smith
The trouble with the Black Humorists is that they are not, as a rule, very humorous. They are, in fact, generally very depressing…. It is not necessarily t...
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Critical Essay by Granville Hicks
[Vonnegut] is a sardonic humorist and satirist in the vein of Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift. In earlier works, such as Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, and God Bles...
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Critical Essay by Leslie A. Fiedler
[The] novel must cease taking itself seriously or perish…. Vonnegut has had what we now realize to be an advantage in this regard, since he began as a Pop wr...
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Critical Essay by William Boyd
In 1975 Kurt Vonnegut published a collection of reviews, articles and speeches under the annoying title of Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons. Now, six years later, he h...
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Critical Essay by David A. Myers
Kurt Vonnegut's latest work, Jailbird, continues the trend of his two preceding works, Breakfast of Champions and Slapstick, away from sci fi entertainment towa...
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Critical Essay by Richard Giannone
Even from the experience of the modern century, which has already witnessed the killing of over one hundred million people in wars and death camps, political philoso...
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